Ted, Ted, Ted

Laura decided to take her training wheels off her bike more or less permanently this weekend. We went to this big paved playground nearby and she practiced while I shot hockey balls against the wall. I showed her what a figure-8 is, and she worked on that with unusual concentration for a long time. When she did her sharp, swoopy turns — moves she wouldn’t even have thought of a week ago — you could amost hear the crackle of synapses connecting under her helmet. I had to stop shooting and just watch, open-mouthed. I was considerably happier than I was when I got my own training wheels off, I think. On Sunday at Jana and Steve’s house we ceremoniously installed a kickstand. Laura took the bike out and rode it on the sidewalk for a few moments, then stopped, stood it up, took a break, then took it out again. I thought I would have just taken off around the block at this point, but she repeated the sequence a few times. The kickstand was much more than a piece of hardware. All the stage business of reaching down to raise it before riding, and the satisfying click when it locks into place, and the careful standing up of the bike when finished, are just as significant to her as the actual riding. They seem to frame the event, to give her a tangible way to fit this into the succession of passages into big-kidhood.